Nutr vs. Almond Cow: We Put the Alternative Milk Makers to the Test

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I’m as much of a Milk Enjoyer as any adult man should be. My parents grew up on small farms, where they had cows and actually drank unpasteurized cow’s milk—before right-wing weightlifting dudes on Twitter called it a superfood. My parents gave me my love of milk (and a genetic tolerance for it), and to this day, if I’m eating cereal, buying or making a latte, or following any recipe, I want whole milk.

But in my current living situation with a lactose intolerant girlfriend, I can’t justify buying separate milks, and I can’t get behind store bought alternative milk. The long list of ingredients freaks me out, and the price of oat milk compared to the price of rolled oats makes me feel insane. So, I turned our fridge into a science experiment full of mason jars soaking walnuts, cashews, almonds, and oats, and started blending my own alt milk.

The results were not awful… But the juice was not worth the squeeze (nut milk not worth the milking?) for me.

All this to say, I was crying out for this little kitchen gadget. I desperately needed an at-home alternative milk maker, but with Nutr and Almond Cow, I wasn’t sure where to send my dollars. So I put each through weeks of rigorous testing to make the definitive guide on the best nut milk makers.

Q: Should I buy a Nutr or an Almond Cow?
A: For performance, the Nutr; it's better looking, smaller and makes better milk. But for convenience, the Almond Cow makes milk faster and quieter.

Nutr

It really comes down to Nutr’s ability to use heat. Every other difference was more in the realm of preference. But since the Nutr can fully boil water, it’s able to blend milk to a much nicer texture, and you can even make actual alternative creams and creamers—a godsend for vegan bakers.

When running cycles, the Nutr had three options: Hot, warm, and room temperature. The hot cycle took around 15 to 20 minutes. The warm cycle took between five and 10 minutes. The room temperature cycle took about two minutes. For simple milks, like your average almond or cashew, you could blend it at room temperature, and the result would be great. But for more complex milks—think coconut because it’s more fatty, or oat because it requires rehydrating the oats—running the machine on warm provided incredible, creamy results. Time and again, we preferred the milks that we blended on warm or hot, as it just combines everything more evenly. Even though the recipe guide used the warm or hot settings for actual creamers or hot drinks, it improved the quality of milks, and was always worth the wait. Plus, that heat function means you can technically use the Nutr as an electric kettle, two machines in one.

Non-performance wise, the Nutr really shines with its looks and its size. In either color (black or white) it’s incredibly sleek, and at its size, it’s a lot easier to store than the Almond Cow. If you want to leave it on the counter, it looks good enough for that. If you want to store it in a cabinet, it’s small enough to easily do so.

So where does the Nutr fall short? Also in its size, actually. The Nutr is only big enough to blend single servings. The most milk you can ever make at one time is about 11 ounces, just shy of one cup. It’s billed a sustainability thing: You only make enough milk to use right then and there, no waste. For the occasional coffee, it’s totally fine, perfect even. For large recipes, or if you’re just using more than one cup of milk a week, it really gets to be a pain.

There is, however, a solution in the works. Nutr is making a larger family-sized machine that will compete with the Almond Cow on size. If they get this one right, Nutr could take over the nut milk making market.

Almond Cow - Essentials Bundle

Let me say: Personally, I use the Almond cow.

The Almond Cow bundle comes with a half-gallon glass jar. It’s cute, first of all. It makes my shitty Brooklyn apartment feel like a Midwest homestead. In two minutes, you can blend a half gallon of milk, and then you’re set for the next week. If you don’t want a full half-gallon, you don’t have to make that big of a batch, that simple.

Almond Cow’s other win is in its speed. Every Almond Cow cycle lasts about two minutes. Sounds normal, but compared to the 10 minutes I was waiting for the Nutr, it felt like seconds. On top of that, because of its heft, the Almond Cow is really, really quiet. If you're in a different room, you hardly hear the buzzing.

But! As much as I loved the convenience of the Almond Cow, the end result just left me a bit underwhelmed. That one cycle is so fast, but to the detriment of your milks. Almond and cashew milk work great in that cycle, oat is fine, but coconut required multiple cycles. Compared to running those ingredients through a warm or hot cycle on the Nutr, the Almond Cow fell just a little bit short. The second downfall is the same thing that makes it so great: The size. At 12” H x 9.5” W x 6.5” D this thing is really big, significantly larger than the Nutr. It doesn't fit in any of our cabinets. We store this guy on top of the fridge.

All that said, I feel like a hypocrite because I prefer the Almond Cow, and it's all down to convenience. You can make a weeks-worth of milk in two minutes—six minutes max. It's easy to keep clean, and once you find a place to store it, you forget about its size. Keep the fancy creamers and whatever. For families or anyone that uses a lot of milk, I reckon you’ll feel the same way.

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